Gilligan glad to play a part in Roscommon success story

When John Gilligan came in as strength and conditioning coach for the Roscommon ladies at the start of the 2025 season, he knew that his role would be a significant part of Finbar Egan’s overall plan to bring success to the county. What he mightn’t have realised was just how integral he would become, in very different ways, prompted by two changes in the overall landscape for the group.

The first was the new rules, brought in to try and share in the feelgood factor that the men’s game was experiencing on the back of the 2025 season. Critically, the Ballymore native could well have looked at the way things played out for the men, with greater aerobic demands but less contact, and put increased emphasis on speed and athleticism.

Instead, Gilligan went a different route, and that was vindicated in the way that Roscommon thrived in contact situations in their All-Ireland intermediate final win over Fermanagh at Croke Park recently.

“The middle eight always have to be mobile, so while the 'solo and go' added to the demands on those players, the way we planned it out, we drew it up that the wing-forwards would have to work extremely hard, empty the tank, and then we’d bring on the finishers,” explained John.

“But there were also changes to the tackle rule, and based on that, we put a lot of emphasis on strength. So in November, and for a lot of December, we weren’t on the field at all. It was gym only, and the absence of games at that time of year meant that Finbar was happy to give me free rein to do the work we needed to do.”

While that worked continued throughout the year, the second change was in response to the debacle that was the Connacht final. John offers a sheepish laugh as he says that they didn’t look particularly fit that day and that people could well have questioned what they were doing, though it was generally seen as a complete systems failure, rather than a breakdown in any one component of the team’s performance.

Either way, there was a shakeup in responsibilities in the backroom team and Egan leaned on Gilligan, a former Westmeath footballer and hurler who runs the JG Elite gym in Athlone, to try and get the team into a better defensive structure. As John describes it, it was a case of “doubling down on the clarity of what we wanted to do”.

“We played four or five challenge games and the way we saw it was that we wanted to play with a double six,” referring to the soccer tactic of using two holding midfielders.

“Saoirse Wynne is a fantastic player and I was delighted to see her get player of the match (in the All-Ireland final), but our approach was to have everyone briefed as to how the half-back line would play, including anyone who might be part of the cover from outfield, or those players on the panel who were still fighting for one of those starting jerseys in that line.”

Then, working in tandem with Athlone’s John O’Brien who was Roscommon’s performance coach, there was the challenge of getting the team out of the slump in confidence that came from winning one out of eight competitive games.

“Confidence took a massive hit so our message was to reinforce that this is a good group of players, but to emphasise that their backs were to the wall, and it was up to them to either quit, or to stand up and fight,” said Gilligan.

The players proved more than willing to fight, and by the time they got to Croke Park, they were ready to show the world that physically, as well as football-wise, they were ready to finally take their place on a higher stage.